Fairy Tales Come True

Most young girls’ fantasy often revolves around the idea of being a beautiful princess, who one day will meet and fall in love with her prince charming, then together they shall live a happily-ever-after life. Perhaps this is the reason why fairy tales, like those from Walt Disney (“Cinderella”, “Snow White”, or “Sleeping Beauty”, etc.), are still as popular right now as they were many generations ago. The majority falls deeply in love with the image that each princess from these fairy tales often portrays: an ideal Western-beauty with long golden hair, luscious red lips, and soft white skin. It seems as if the fairy-tale fans cannot move beyond the idea of “Once upon a time, there lived a beautiful princess…” and “…there they lived happily ever after”. Each reader has probably secretly wished that his or her life would be as half as beautiful and romantic as the characters in these fairy tales. However, as much difficult as it is to believe, reality is in fact not a fairy tale. When dissecting deeper into fairy tales as a whole, there exists multiple concerns that one often fails to acknowledge, such as issues regarding gender roles, prejudices, and stereotypes of this so-called happily-ever-after world.

Before going further into the matters within fairytales, it is necessary to understand the main purpose behind the act of storytelling. Storytelling is often mistaken as the act that is performed solely for the pleasure of bed-time entertainment. Bed-time stories, such as those fairy tales, are told as if the purpose is to send the person into a deep, sweet, and adventurous dream. However, storytelling serves beyond that border. Leslie Marmon Silko mentioned in her article, “Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective”, that storytelling “constructs our identity” (50) and identifies our culture (51). More than that, storytelling also defines what it means to be human. We know about our existence on Earth because we hear stories regarding how babies are born into this world, in which our parents confirm we were born the same way. We know that we belong in a family with a father and a mother because they told us that they were our father and our mother, and they address themselves that way. Our parents also tell us stories about how they grew up in comparison to us, or how we often resemble a relative in the family. Through storytelling, it comforts us when we make a mistake because we have heard stories about similar mistakes that were done by other individuals, which then help us to quickly find a way to fix the problem. The stories continue on from generations to generations. The ability to tell stories, to listen and learn from the stories, and to preserve the stories for the future generation makes each of us human.

Within the human race, it is vital to understand what it means to be a gendered human, meaning what does it mean to be a male? And what does it mean to be a female? The gender line between men and women is often stereotyped and has stirred up many controversies. Males are frequently portrayed as the head of the family, who is physically and emotionally strong, and whose sphere exists outside of home. Females are frequently portrayed as dependent, physically and emotionally weak, and belong in a domestic sphere. When reading “Little Snow-White” by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, we can easily differentiate the male and the female characters due to the stereotypes that each is given. The dwarfs play the male role because they leave their house each day to go to work in the mountains for ore and they demand Snow White to cook, clean, and take care of the house for them in return for her residency. Snow White, on the other hand, plays the female role because she is clearly dependent on the dwarfs for her survival, she shows weaknesses through her easily-swayed actions whenever being tricked by the Queen, and she certainly belongs in a domestic sphere because she gladly accepts to cook and clean for the dwarfs. Nowadays, controversies arise from the debate that this particular gender division between men and women is certainly not applicable. One might argue that women today are as equal as men and women are certainly qualified to perform any tasks that men would perform, or vice versa. However, with that being said, does it then imply that there is no differentiation in being a male or a female? If so, would “Little Snow-White” still have the same delivery with Snow White being the one who goes out and works for the food on the plate while the dwarfs stay at home and take care of the house? It certainly will be difficult to adjust to or even to accept that scenario, even though we might agree that some females have now gone to work outside of home to feed their family and some males have now stayed at home to take care of the house. The gender blur between men and women that we see today does exist, but it has yet to exist in fairy tales because fairy tales often show stereotypes. The act of stereotyping serves as a short-cut to the way that the majority of the population views our culture. Therefore, though we might not completely agree with the way in which gender roles are represented in these fairy tales, it still serves us well in a sense that we might gain a basic understanding of what it means to be a male and what it means to be a female. Whether personally accepted or rejected, the notion of males being dominant and females being subordinate has been deeply embedded into our culture’s view of the gender roles.

Aside from the stereotypes, fairy tales also deal with biased matters relating gender roles. There seems to be a pattern within most of these fairy tales: the wealthy man who remarries after his wife passed away while due to childbirth, the daughter who grows up to be the most beautiful yet lives the most tragic life, and the prince charming who comes to rescue the beautiful princess in the end. In each situation, there is a sense of bias because the male characters are given chances to take control, whereas the female characters are not. The man has the choice to remarry, to choose his bride, and to be the hero in the woman’s eyes. The woman, on the other hand, has none of those choices. She is left to deal with her hardships alone, until being rescued by the man. If this is the case then gender roles are certainly more lenient toward men than women when it comes to love, which then gives men more power, or so it seems. Perhaps this goes back to Sigmund Freud and his theory regarding psychosexual stages. Freud theorized that each human goes through five stages of psychosexual development and will experience pleasure in one part of the body more than in others at each stage (Santrock 49). The Freudian stages include oral stage, anal stage, phallic stage, latency stage, and genital stage (Santrock 49). According to Freud, the phallic (comes from Latin word phallus, meaning “penis”) stage has special importance because this is when the Oedipus complex appears, causing the child to replace the same-sex parent and to find affections in the opposite-sex parent (Santrock 50). Freud also referred to this stage as “penis envy” for girls because girls blame their mothers for their lack of penis and change their sexual focus toward their fathers (Santrock 50). Freud stated that boys do shift their sexual focus toward the opposite sex, but they will still identify with their fathers because they both have a penis (Santrock 50). Freud’s theory clearly makes males dominate because of their sexual advantage. Bringing this back to the gender roles within the fairy tales, males seem to have more power than females when it comes to love because males have what it takes to satisfy females, which somewhat put them in charge. If this is the case, then love mainly revolves around sexual acts between a male and a female and power lies in the hands of the male because he holds the key to sexual acts.

Of course, many people nowadays would oppose to these ideas of male dominant, male being in charge of sexual acts, and female subordinate. Many would see these ideas as stereotypes or biases. However, they are still widely expressed in almost all fairy tales, or stories in general. Therefore, it is important to realize that stories only show a small percentage of what it means to be human, what it means to be a gendered human, what love is, and what power is. The rest is left for each individual to search for on his or her own, depends on his or her culture.

References:

Grim, Jacob and Grim, Wilhelm. “Little Snow-White”. The Harvard Classics, 1909-14. http://www.bartleby.com/17/2/25.html

Santrock, John W. Adolescence. 10^th Ed. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2005.

Silko, Leslie M. “Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective”